Have now posted the final set of pictures from the big August mountain bike ride from Užice in Serbia to Žabljak, Durmitor in Montenegro undertaken by Straja and myself. Check them out here. Just time for a quick write-up of the last day’s ride here before I write an article to wrap the whole thing up:

Today’s ride could in some respects be termed a disaster if Straja and I weren’t such optimistic types! We had already realised we had to do 90km, the most riding in any one day, if we were to make Žabljak before sundown. So we got up early, messed around for three hours and finally got going around 9 am, having vacated the grounds of the disused school where we had camped.

The first hurdle, heading south, was to cross the newly-established Montenegrin border post - a formality, as we suspected. Then it was downhill into the murky, smoggy depths of Plevlja to grab some food to eat along the way (we did not want to get delayed by the big city lights!)

Disaster strikes

This was where disaster struck, with 65km to go to Žabljak. I don’t know WHY I didn’t worry too much about our road diverging from the GPS track I had programmed in! I think I thought it was just another example of a new road taking a divergent route from an old one. There would have been a signpost indicating a turning to Žabljak, right? Wrong.

We happily rode westwards, stopping at a picturesque spot to eat our sandwiches and continuing for a full 25km - without too much climbing, blessedly. It was only when we reached a a small village with a 90-degree turn in the road that Straja saw a car with Belgrade plates stop suddenly and turn round, got suspicious that there might be something wrong, and thought to ask some locals if we were on the right road to Žabljak…

I will not recount the surprise on their faces, or my livid expression at having been such an idiot as to ignore the GPS, rely on Montenegrin signposting and assume the locals we had spoken to en route out of Plevlja would think to tell us where the turn-off was. I will also not tell the tale of our hell-for-leather ride back to Pljevlja. All I can say is that a 50km diversion on fully-laden mountain bikes is a serious blow to your plans!

Back on track

What to do? This put the possibility of reaching Žabljak today in serious doubt. It was already gone 4 in the afternoon as we headed out to Žabljak, having found the un-signed turnoff we had missed. Even if we covered the 40km to the Tara Canyon in reasonable time (along a main road - no time left for mountain-malarkey), there was still the small matter of a 22km climb from the 700m above sea level, where the famous Tara Canyon bridge sist, up to the 1450 m asl where our destination lay, and that after an exhausting 100+km for the day.

Tara Canyon and bridge

An uneventful trip to Đurđevića Tara (village where the bridge is located) got us there some time after 7pm, with me racing down the hill to the bridge in the hope of catching it before darkness fell, as I had never seen it before and wanted a photo for the blog! It certainly is spectacular: the Tara Canyon bridge was built in the late 1930’s by engineer Mijat Trojanović, its 5 arches stretching 365m at a height of 170m above the River Tara, in its time the largest bridge of its kind in Europe and still quite a sight to behold, never mind cross over.

The dilemma

Now came the dilemma - darkness was falling, Žabljak was a looong climb away (over 3 hours, for sure) and we were exhausted. But I had promised Mrs. D. we would be meeting up that evening in Žabljak! And I don’t like to disappoint! Though Straja initially, quite wisely, decided to camp down at the Tara bridge and do the climb in the morning, for some reason I never fathomed, at the last minute he decided to accompany me on my suicidal bid.

The climb was every bit as hard as we expected - almost complete darkness (hooray for lights and reflective clothing), no bike-sized vehicles willing to stop and drive us up (we would have settled for that by then), serious exhaustion setting in, water supplies low and a never-ending ascent to tackle.

THE END

How we made it I am still not quite sure, but I don’t think I could have pedalled another 100m by the time we hit Žabljak some 3.5 hours later. We had made it, later than scheduled, but at least on the same day we had planned, having made a total of 300km instead of the 200km I had planned for the 4 and a half days…

Was it worth it? Of course it was. I’ve learned plenty from this trip - and I hope I can share some of these amazing insights with you soon (like, “look at the GPS sometimes”, for example), but in the meantime this is the end of the Užice Žabljak mountain bike trek. Look out for a little wrap-up soon, giving you some stats you might be interested in, as well as a complete GPS record.

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Posted on September 3rd, 2008 by markowe
Filed under: GPS, MTB Serbia (All), Serbia Bike Trek!